Tag Archives: environment

Thailand is a tropical country which is rich with culture and natural environment. There are many kinds of forests in Thailand and many groups of people who live in them. Some of Thai cultures help to keep the forest environments. There are 3 groups of people who are not so well-known. They live in 3 different forests, and their life routines and their traditions do not hurt the forest and also keep it more plentiful. They are the tribesmen who live in the mountains, the houseboat families who live in mangrove forest and the people who live in deciduous forest.

The tribesmen’s beliefs help to keep the tropical forest on the mountains in the north of Thailand pure. These people believe in ghosts, and those ghosts live in the trees, so they have to protect the trees. They do not cut the big trees because they believe that the big ghosts live in them. Moreover, all children who are already 5 years old will grow the trees because each of them has to have a ghost to looking after, for their whole life. There are only two reasons that these tribesmen can cut the trees. The first reason is when they need new houses for their marriages. The second reason is when they need the area for their farms. For this second reason, they will cut only the small trees which are younger than ten years old. In my opinion, this is very interesting, that their belief which most people think that are stupid, can protect the forest much more wiser than people with education.

When I went to the west of Thailand with my high school friends, I met another community who grew the trees in deciduous forests correctly. Their lives was more modern than the tribemen. In fact, this has been a project of the Thai King since many decades ago. He began to inspire and give the growing tree methods to these people after Thailand lost more than half of its trees in this forest to Myanmar. Before this project began, many Thai people who wanted to grow the big trees in this forest would cut all grasses and small trees down, then, they put the seeds of big trees in. The seeds of the big trees cannot grow without other small trees, which grow more quickly at first and protect the big trees from the sun and animals. The group of people I met did not take anything from the land. They knew that the nature had its own way to bear again. What they can do was help the nature’s development to be faster. I did not just see their activities; I also visited some tunnels on the mountains. I had a hard time to get to those tunnels. I had to climb a wet mountain all along the way. There were no stairs there, and this was the only place in Thailand which did not have stairs for the visitors. It means they really kept the nature purely. I found many strange and colorful insects and they were not afraid of me. That was because no one disturbed them. In the tunnel, the water dropped from the top stones. All I saw, were the ways that people in this forest kept their homes naturally.

I also visit the mangrove forest every year and once, I found a group of house-boat families who were very harmonious with the mangrove forest environment. I was very excited the first time I saw their boat-houses, because I had seen people in other mangrove forests cut the trees and make houses on the land. I think that they did clever things because the level of the water always changed in the afternoon and at night. I saw the ways they found their food, and it was very intelligent. They made a big room with bamboo under the sea and its door faced to the direction of water. When there were many fish in that room, they would close it and take only the fish they could eat. The small fish and the other useless animal would be released back into the sea. They also got sea mussels by hanging a piece of rope down into the sea and the sea mussels would attach to it by themselves. These ways to find food were much more intelligent than other fishermen who use electricity and nets. Electricity can kill every animal around that area, and most of them cannot be consumed. Nets catch all sizes of the fish, and small fish get caught although no one wants to eat them. This is why I really like the boat-house living. Their perfect life does not hurt any the life cycle in the sea.

In conclusion, all these three groups of people who live with nature can adapt themselves to it, although most people in the world take the natural resources for themselves and waste them very fast. All people who have good knowledge and are destroying the world should be ashamed, at least if they see these three groups of common folks.